


midnight in kowloon

by prettybrilliantfunny



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-28
Updated: 2013-09-28
Packaged: 2017-12-27 20:06:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,376
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/983061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prettybrilliantfunny/pseuds/prettybrilliantfunny
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Every year on the anniversary of the closing of the Breach, Hong Kong holds the Victory Festival in the repopulated boneslums.  People the world over fly in to celebrate and participate in the Kissing Masquerade.</p>
            </blockquote>





	midnight in kowloon

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lauren](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lauren/gifts).



It wasn’t the first masquerade—the impromptu celebrations had become one of the few brief sparks of joy in a world being slowly overrun by kaiju—but the Victory Festival was the very last.  Coming up through the Academy, Raleigh had heard about them of course, but it wasn’t until the three Jaeger drop in Manila that he’d finally gotten to see a masquerade for himself.

He’d gone with Yancy, and while they’d both ended up making questionable decisions by the night’s end, it had been a relief.  To hide his face, to forget – if only for a few hours – that he and Yance had made it, and Horizon Brave had not.  _It had been a lot different back then_ , thought Raleigh, looking out over the already-packed streets.  Masks had been whatever you could find in the ruined city; after a kaiju went down, it wasn’t an hour before people were starting the celebrations.

The first Victory Festival had been the same; the breach had been closed and the world had been saved for the very last time.  No one had slept in Hong Kong that night.  But while the celebration was going on far below the Shatterdome, Raleigh had spent the night sitting in Stacker’s quarters with Mako.  Quiet; a loss too heavy to bear alone.  Last year it had felt hard to celebrate.

This year was different. 

Everyone was wearing elaborate masks styled to look like kaiju and Jaeger alike.  The half-masks obscured identities, while leaving mouths free for kissing.  The exposed skin of cheeks and throats were decorated in blue swirls of dust. (A willowy youth in a Tacit Ronin mask had done the honors before they’d wandered five steps into the Festival, sketching patterns into their skin and kissing the backs of Mako’s hands, and Raleigh twice).

Everyone was drinking and dancing; men and women of all ages were running around kissing everyone and being kissed.  And everyone was glittering in kaiju blue.

Raleigh looked over at Mako.  Her hair, once so distinctive with its brilliant blue, was streaked with green now – bright as grass.  Raleigh’s henley was a muted version of the shade; unconsciously done.  Together they made quite the pair; apart, he doubted anyone would recognize the ‘saviors of the world.’  He tapped the side of her Gipsy mask fondly.  “Ready?”

She only smirked.  “Raleigh, _this is for real_.”

Beneath the blue of Otachi’s eyes, Raleigh rolled his own.  He reached out to flick her mask again, but Mako dodged easily – like ink, slipping under his arm and—with a slender wave behind her—pushed into the crowd.  He watched a teenage girl, platinum blonde hair spilling out from behind her matching Gipsy mask, plant a beaming kiss straight on Mako’s mouth, and then left his co-pilot to it. 

He knew Tendo was here somewhere, but he’d never find him.  He’d bet money Newt had made the trip back as well, probably dragging wife and Herrmann along with him.  But you didn’t come to the masquerade _with_ someone—not really; it defeated the whole purpose. 

Grabbing a beer off a passing tray, Raleigh slugged some of it back and slipped into the crowd; kissing and being kissed with equal frequency as he made his way into the heart of the festival.

 

 

 

The drinks were pouring faster than people could pay for them.  More than once someone bumped into Raleigh and left a drink in his hand before leaving.

The paper lanterns above the crowd caught Mako now and then—all gold and green, but Raleigh didn’t need them to know where Mako was.  Even in the crowded Kowloon streets, he could sense Mako – moving, dancing.  The flow of the crowd carried her away and brought her back in a comfortable ebbing.

The music was loud and everything felt loose.  Hot.  Raleigh licked his lips; tasted sweat and the sweet honey of the dust.  The bass-line rumbled through his chest and he danced, blinded by the lights and the crush of bodies. 

 

 

 

A new partner fell in next to him—he looked younger, but it was almost impossible to tell through the masks and strobing lights.  He settled one hand on Raleigh’s hip for balance, and then tilted his face up with honest-to-god bedroom eyes.

He murmured “ _hello_ ” and sound curved deliciously across his mouth.

His accent wasn’t thick – a traveler too long from home – but it rolled unmistakably over his vowels, the soft a’s, when he leaned in to whisper something in Raleigh’s ear.  An Aussie.  He wasn’t the only Australian there of course, but he was the only one wearing kaiju.  Raleigh’d lost count of the accents hiding their faces proudly behind Striker Eureka’s silver helm.

He was shorter than Raleigh, and had to raise up onto his toes to brush lips.  It was a shock of mouth to mouth. 

Then the crowd shifted with the song and the two were pressed chest to chest.  He slotted so easily against Raleigh’s body, he wanted to keep him there.  The man grinned, all teeth, and too late Raleigh realized he’d fisted both hands in the man’s leather jacket.

But sliding together to the pounding beat, the other man slipped two fingers into the front pocket of Raleigh’s jeans and tugged him closer.  He used the momentum to surge upwards and catch his mouth for a second time.

This was nothing like that first glancing gesture.  _Thi_ s was a proper kiss, confident and pressing.  Raleigh opened his mouth to it, felt the hot stutter of the other man’s surprise, and then nothing was enough.  The kiss turned rough, mouths bruising against one another, and Raleigh had a sudden, desperate need to touch his skin.  Stubble scrapping his chin, he chased down the challenge of the kiss, tugging roughly at the younger man’s shirt until it came away from his jeans, and Raleigh’s hand slide blessedly against hot skin.  The other man arched up, grabbing wildly for Raleigh’s hair and nearly unseating his mask.  It didn’t matter.  Raleigh thought he might suffocate before he stopped kissing him.

“Hey! Otachi right?”

Raleigh blinked, knocked out of his daze.  He tried to pull back, and was rewarded with a bite; the feeling shot straight south and it took him a beat to realize what was happening.  A young woman in a Crimson Typhoon mask was at his elbow, painted mouth quirked.

“Wha-“

“You’re doing it wrong,” she laughed, but it was a reprimand as well.  “Tonight’s for everyone!”

Whatever Raleigh might have said in protest, it hardly mattered.  Even the slightest distance, the briefest pause meant separation in the Festival.  Already the crowd was pushing at them and then someone stumbled between them and Raleigh felt leather slip through his fingers.  He caught sight of the other man just briefly, Mutavore mask turned to look back, and then he was spun away.

“Shit,” Raleigh swore.  He was pulled into a circle of jumping Raijus and just like that, the tethered moment was snapped.

 

 

 

He wasn’t alone for long.  Men and women danced their way through his arms and across his lips, but he was distracted to the point of light-headedness.  He’d lost the taste of the other man, but the phantom heat of his touch ghosted across his ribs.    He pushed his way to a smaller congregation of people, ears ringing.

Mako slipped gracefully through the crowd, and suddenly Raleigh’s arms were full of her.  Her cool lips ghosted across the corner of his mouth.  Comforting.  When she pulled back, he could see her lips were stained and glittering blue – she’d certainly been enjoying herself.  Raleigh laughed and tilted the Gipsy mask back just enough so he could see her eyes, highlighted with dust.  He kissed the end of her nose.  Mako laughed as the golden visor slipped back down.

She squeezed his arms, and he squeezed back.  Then she was swept away again.  She couldn’t stay; it wasn’t in the spirit of the festival.  You were meant to forget yourself, forget who you’d come with and who you’d lost. 

Someone grabbed Raleigh by the shirt collar and kissed him quick and hot on the mouth, reminding him you weren’t supposed to be thinking at all.  Then they were gone too stumbling with laughter into the next group of people.  Only when Raleigh caught himself scanning the group for a certain Mutavore mask did he decide he needed another drink.

 

 

 

The woman serving drinks made him chase her laughing down the length of the bar, the ribbons of her Slattern mask dancing behind her, but she surrendered with the wave of a white cocktail napkin and a kiss.

 

 

 

Raleigh lost track of time.  His veins were running warm with music and liquor, and his entire mouth was tingling from the festival dust.  The little girl he was dancing with laughed as the song ended and he spun her.  She’d been standing on his feet, but now she hopped off and tugged him down to her level.  Her Gipsy mask was too big, slipping down her nose—and he had to pretend not to recognize her. 

Gottlieb’s young daughter made Raleigh lean over and then kissed the top of his head.  Raleigh pretended to nom her fingers and she went off shrieking with laughter to where Dr. Gottlieb was clearly standing stiffly in the circle around them, leaning on his cane.  He had chosen Brawler Yukon.

Raleigh turned, catching the eyes of a woman in a Yamarashi mask—who’d clearly been drawn in by him dancing with the little girl.  He waved a little awkwardly, and it was enough.  She smiled shyly, and started towards him.

The crowd split, just a bit—just enough—and the man in the Mutavore mask was standing in front of him, smirking with his hands in his pockets.  Raleigh stood dumbstruck.  There were thousands of revelers—to run into the same person _again_ —

Raleigh grabbed for him, missed, and ended up kissing a bearded man who laughed deep like bear and slapped him on the back.  Then the big man raised his massive cup of beer and headed toward the South streets, shouting toasts. 

Frustrated, Raleigh ran a hand over his face and bit back a curse.

Then a hand closed around his wrist from behind.  He spun around, coming face to face with the Mutavore.  Raleigh was probably grinning like an idiot, but he couldn’t bring himself to care.

“Are you stalking me?” he asked over the music.

“Don’t flatter yourself, mate.”  But the other man’s mouth was half a smirk when he dragged Raleigh down by the shirt and kissed him. 

Raleigh cut it short, made him chase his mouth, laughing all the while—they ducked a tray of drinks, stumbled, and crashed into a streetlamp, but the younger man righted them, licking his way into Raleigh’s mouth before Raleigh even had his feet back under him.

Thumbing a streak of blue glitter to where it disappeared beneath a leather collar, Raleigh chuckled across his bruised lips as they parted.  “ _Yeah?_ ”

“Bloody drongo,” growled the other man.  But then his fingers found skin under Raleigh’s henley and the Gipsy pilot short-circuited, that mouth working over his again in a way that was decidedly unfit for public.

Then he stopped.

Raleigh had to get his brain working again, but he was a half-second behind and when his eyes focused again the man was gone; had probably slipped away smirking.  The little shit.

But Raleigh was on to him now.  If the man could find him again amidst hundreds of people, then so could Raleigh.  He probed the corner of his mouth with his tongue, tasting glitter dust and swollen lips.  Oh, he was going to find him.

 

 

 

He kissed and danced his way eastward, where the crowds were thinner and the lights dimmer.  A roadside bar had amassed a huge knot of people, and he knew Mako was in center of it.  He might have stopped for a laugh, if he wasn’t on a very time-sensitive mission.

It took him a few minutes to find what he was looking for, and then there she was – a young woman, the only Jaeger in a sea of kaiju masks.  Her dark skin was striped with blue dust; he added traces of his own marked encounters when he took her hands and spun her with the music into an open space.

She laughed, one hand pressed to her chest and leaned into kiss him.  Which was when Raleigh pushed his mask up.

The recognition was instantaneous.

“Holy shit,” she swore.  “ _You’re Ra_ — ”

Raleigh pressed a finger to her lips, raising his eyebrows pointedly.  She stopped speaking, her eyes going a little cross-eyed as she tried to look down at his finger.

“It’s for a good cause, I promise.” Raleigh whispered.  And kissed her, his finger still between them. 

Then he lifted her mask gently away from her face and replaced it with his own, her dark braid falling from behind Otachi’s ridged bones like a tail.  This close he could see her watching wide-eyed through the blue-neon of the kaiju’s eyes as he pulled her mask on, hiding his face again before anyone else in this corner of the celebration could recognize him.

With a half-salute he left her there, still looking slightly star-struck, and rejoined the dancing crowd—this time as Striker Eureka.

 

 

 

It was easy to find the younger man.  After twenty minutes of obscurity, Raleigh caught sight of his familiar leather jacket and the curved kaiju blade.  He was clearly looking for Raleigh, but now that the man didn’t know to hide himself from searching Striker eyes, Raleigh could keep him easily in his sight—tracking him through the crowd from a distance.

His palms itched to curve around hard angles again, but he held off, watching the man grow more and more frustrated beneath his Mutavore mask.  Once or twice he looked over to the small corner where Raleigh had secreted himself, but his eyes skirted over him like they skirted over a dozen other men in Striker masks.

Raleigh waited for him to have a brief conversation—argument?—with a older man in a Lucky Seven mask, and then – when he stormed off – Raleigh followed him.

He was setting a pretty brisk pace, even through the people who were obstinately trying to head in the opposite direction, but Raleigh kept to the sidewalks and kept step easily enough.  He’d stopped scanning the crowd; now he was determinedly starting straight ahead, tension locking up the stiff swing of his arms.

Maybe he’d given up on finding Raleigh again—and they couldn’t have that, could they?  Even if he did make a humorously sore loser.  Raleigh waited patiently for an opening, and then—

“Gotcha!” 

Raleigh grabbed the man’s arm, yanking him out of the stream of people and under a shop awning. 

“Oi!” He was unceremoniously shoved back, the younger man smoothing out his jacket and scowling.  “Not in the mood—”

He did a double-take.

“You, _fu—!_ ”

Raleigh swallowed the sound.  The man’s hands were in his shirt; Raleigh crowded them back against the storefront kissing that scowl into smooth lines.  He fingered the collar of the man’s leather jacket, palm pressing to the tantalizing curve of his neck; Raleigh wasn’t letting him slip away again.  He thumbed the space behind his ear and was rewarded with a shudder.

“You fuck,” the man murmured again—but all traces of his anger had disappeared.  Raleigh kissed him hard just to be sure.

 

 

 

“Are you staying in town?” he asked in a rush.  “Tonight, I mean?”

The man’s eyes were bright green. 

Raleigh couldn’t remember—“ _Yes_.”

He could smell him, the clean tang of soap and something else beneath the honey sweet smell of the dust.  It was distracting.  “Yes,” he said again, tongue darting out to taste the sharp line of the man’s jaw.

The man’s grip tightened and Raleigh pulled back – just enough.  He wished he could see his eyes, but the tilt of his hips was unmistakable and Raleigh had to brace one hand on the shop.

“Then what the hell are we standing here for?”

 

 

 

For a hot minute, Raleigh considered fucking him in the elevator.  The doors opening made the decision for him, but he didn’t mind—not when it meant there was a bed and all manner of flat surfaces waiting just down the hall, in a room with a door that locked.

They stumbled into it more than anything else; the other man torn between reaching the room and reaching Raleigh’s cock.  He fumbled blindly with Raleigh’s belt, letting Raleigh back them into the room and kick the door shut.  Raleigh chuckled against his mouth as the man swore into the kiss, tugging hard at his beltloops.

He tried to look down, but their masks clashed together; it was all but impossible to see properly in the dark and he was clearly on a mission to undress Raleigh as quickly as possible.  With an impatient huff, the man leaned back just enough to push his own mask back over his head, and Raleigh’s movements stuttered to a stop.  He was staring.

“You’re not gonna have a fan moment are you?” Chuck laughed, a bit wryly but still impatient—because he was Chuck fucking Hansen, famous Jaeger pilot and all around cocky son of a bitch.  Chuck Hansen, whose hand was nearly down Raleigh’s pants.

When Raleigh didn’t immediately answer (see: Chuck Hansen, _hand on his dick_ ), Chuck glared up at him—a sharp reminder: _don’t_ _ruin this._

Raleigh had no intention of letting either of them ruin it.

Chuck reached for Raleigh’s mask, but Raleigh caught his wrist.  And it wasn’t fair (Chuck’s face confirmed it)—but for some reason it felt important that Raleigh kiss him again.  Now.  When Raleigh knew and he didn’t.

He pulled him in by the wrist; his other hand falling along his side.  And when he kissed him, he thought what an idiot he was not to have realized it.  Chuck’s stubble scrapped his jaw, mouth working under his own – hot and slick and Raleigh could taste every smart comment he’d fired at him along the backs of his teeth.  He was hard and almost desperate; torn between wanting to crawl between those thighs now pressing insistently between his own and holding stupidly onto this moment he never even dreamed of wanting in case it was all about to fall apart.

In the end, they were both running out of breath and then Chuck did a move that surprised him—a feinting twist, slipping out of the taller man’s hold—but Raleigh didn’t fight it.  Chuck moved quick, like he expected to be stopped again, and yanked the Striker mask off with both hands.

Raleigh blinked to readjust his eyes from Striker’s copper visor, his hair stuck up and blue; his face exposed.  Chuck’s eyes had gone almost comically wide.

“Fucking _Christ—!_ “

Raleigh didn’t let him finish.  He grabbed his dumbstruck face in his hands and crashed their mouths together.  They staggered, Chuck’s hands flying up grab Raleigh’s wrists, but then he stopped—just short of pulling them away; Raleigh made an encouraging sound into his mouth, and there was no mistaking the shiver that ran down Chuck’s body.

“Clumsy shit,” Chuck hissed; still the same asshole he’d always been, even when his hands were shoving Raleigh’s t-shirt up to press against bare skin.

Raleigh inhaled sharply at the contact.  “Shut up, Hansen,” he growled, and went after the smirk threatening to appear on Chuck’s face.

No longer under the bright lights of the festival, what had started as borderline inappropriate for the masquerade spiraled into the delicious obscenity that could only happen behind locked doors.  They kissed like they’d fought in the halls of the shatterdome; rough and sharp and with every point of contact.  Raleigh held his advantage until Chuck bit him—the dirty cheat—and his body betrayed him, hips snapping forward to grind into Chuck like he was a fucking teenager.  Chuck laughed, ragged and pleased, and it only made it worse.

Raleigh pushed him up against the wall with enough force to wind him, and crowded him into it, using every advantage of his height and weight.  But if he’d hoped to catch Striker’s pilot off-guard, he was sorely mistaken.  Chuck’s hands flew to Raleigh’s belt—and the intention shot immediately to Raleigh’s brain, making him dizzy with heat.  Those hands made quick work of what they’d already started, and then Raleigh was left fumbling to regain control, before his jeans were half down his thighs and Chuck’s hand was pushing past elastic.

“Fuck, Hansen, wait—“

But then hot fingers were curled around his cock and Raleigh shuddered, almost crashing forward before he threw up a hand to brace himself on the wall.  And just like that—everything slowed to honey.

He leaned forward, into Chuck—and his hand—and tried to regulate his breathing.  The wall was cool beneath his forehead, but Chuck’s face was so close to his own now that he could feel the warmth of his breath, each carefully measured exhale.  He turned his head, slowly, to look – eyes half-lidded and half a dozen stupid things to say on the tip of his tongue.

Chuck’s fingers shifted, tightening and loosening imperceptibly, nails lightly scratching, and it was agony.  Agony not to press the pace, agony to hold himself in check—and then Chuck looked up at him through stupidly fair lashes, and gave him one _slow_ stroke.

He moaned, biting it back too late, and Raleigh had never been so strung up in his life; he thought—deliriously—as Chuck’s hand moved that they’d been working up to this point since the day they’d met in the hangar bay. There’s no other explanation; for why his mouth quirked and Raleigh almost came right then and there.

He pressed his nose against Chuck’s neck, to the space just below his ear—mouth ghosting the smeared swirls of blue.  _Is this—is this—?_ He didn’t know what he wanted to ask; neither did Chuck.

“What—what’re—“

Raleigh’s tongue darted out to taste his pulse, and Chuck’s mumbles fell apart in a sigh.  They were chest to chest, with barely enough room between them for Chuck’s wrist, but Raleigh didn’t want to move.  This close he could see the shadow of his lashes, the way his hair curled faintly behind his ear.  This close he was the man in the Mutavore mask; all charm and easy smiles.

He hooked his fingers in the neck of Chuck’s t-shirt and dragged it down, distorting it so he could reach more skin.  Raleigh kissed his way along that stubbled jaw; he sealed an open-mouthed kiss over the hollow of his throat, his free hand coming off the wall to cradle his face, with his thumb in the space under his jaw holding Chuck’s head upward.  Raleigh made a space for himself between Chuck’s shoulders.  His lazy progress continued across the cords of Chuck’s neck, drawing music from him with a graze of teeth, the continued pull—pull of his shirt.  Raleigh licked his way across every newly exposed space.  Stitches popped.

Chuck had freckles across his collarbones.

His breath came out ragged, and it was like a rubberband had snapped inside of Raleigh.  He surged forward and Chuck fumbled, but suddenly nothing was enough.  He was starved for him.

He kissed his hunger across those collarbones, sucked bruises into the shuddering arc of his neck, did everything short of climb him—body rolling up and in as if he could fuck right through him.

“Shit, Becket,” Chuck hissed, even as his own hips rolled forward. “Somethin’s wrong with you, mate.”

Raleigh ground against him again and again, his hands trying to be and pull everywhere at once—and Chuck?  Chuck _pushed_  

Snatching his hand back before he snapped a wrist, Chuck surged against him, bringing everything hard into delicious friction.  He grabbed Raleigh by the hair, wrenching his mouth away from the abuse he was painting across his throat, and it was Chuck who kissed him this time, rough and eager—ratcheting up to meet Raleigh’s pace.  His hips bucked forward, and Raleigh saw stars.

They clawed wildly for purchase, grinding and rutting against one another through their jeans. In the midst of it, Raleigh finally tore that stupid leather jacket off of him, and then his hands were on Chuck’s ass, lifting—

Chuck bit him again, and he groaned.  Then his hand was grabbing Raleigh through his shorts this side of painful, and Raleigh’s half-lidded eyes squeezed shut.  “If you pick me up...,” Chuck growled into his mouth, “I’ll break your fucking hands.”

Raleigh had to suck in a tight breath—but he responded, licking his way into Chuck’s mouth, fingers digging into his ass.  “I think you’d regret that,” he breathed.  (Hot with certainty; they both knew this time wouldn’t be the last.)

Chuck shoved him.  Raleigh let himself be shoved.  He sat—hard—on the edge of the bed.  But he’d done his time in the kwoon, and with a hook of his leg and a sharp twist, Chuck was on his back on the bed.  Raleigh didn’t know if he’d crawled on top of him, or if Chuck pulled him there—but he slotted so easily into the space above his hips that it didn’t matter.

“Fucking get on with it.”

Raleigh laughed.  And just because he knew it would piss him off, he leaned down to kiss him first—nice and slow.  Chuck allowed it for the briefest of moments, then he lifted his hips and pushed at Raleigh’s chest until their lips separated, glaring.  Raleigh went up on his knees to account for the shifting of bodies, the ghost of his earlier laughter still hanging onto the corner of his mouth, and started tugging Chuck’s jeans off.

“Are you gonna talk the whole way through?” he asked, moving backwards as he pulled. 

“Depends,” Chuck hissed as the cool air met exposed skin.  He looked down at Raleigh, eyes heavy-lidded.  “You gonna need a manual, _Ra_ leigh?”

 

 

And if that wasn’t a challenge, he didn’t know what was.


End file.
